


low lays the devil

by Spooks (agonizer)



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demons, Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-02-01 19:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12711381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agonizer/pseuds/Spooks
Summary: Keeping Ryan Bergara alive and safe is a full-time job, and Shane Madej has his work cut out for him.





	1. the sallie house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the boys visit their first demon infected house, and Shane gets a gauge on what's in store.

“If you want to eat Ryan’s heart, turn that light on. My old pal Ryan Bergara, we’re a package deal.”

There’s a twinkle in his eyes, a challenge, and little ‘Sallie’ snarls and spits at him, crouched next to the flashlight on the chair. 

The flashlight flicks back on.

Shane laughs, loud and delighted, and Sallie howls, an ugly sound that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but he doesn’t falter, keeps laughing.

 _Try me,_ he thinks, _you fucking asshole._ What he says, gleefully, however is, “Oh, the light’s on, Ryan! Look at the light! Demon, we got it!”

His friend is, as expected, very busy losing his shit over as little as the flashlight turning on and off, but Shane barely notices it beyond background noise, his eyes trained on the grotesque mockery of a little girl, flickering in and out of shadow and noise, staring at him with glowing eyes of hatred. 

_We’re a package deal, and you can’t fucking touch him._

*

All of this started simple enough — Ryan’s little show about unsolved crimes was harmless, curious, and Shane watched whatever tidbits Ryan got overly excited about and couldn’t wait to share without complaint. A curious interest, but one he shared with however many people it took to keep the ID channel in business, and Shane watched him and Brent retread old stories and older paths with benevolent amusement.

And then Ryan delved into his obsession with the supernatural.

“You know demons aren’t real, right, Ryan? Demons aren’t real. _Right_ , Ryan?” 

Shane gives him a _look_ , and Ryan, energetically, pushes his desk chair back so he can better look at him, gesture more wildly. 

“Demons and ghosts are very real,” he insists, immediately defensive and a little flustered, and it makes the corners of Shane’s lips curl up in barely hidden amusement and a lot of involuntary fondness, “And I’m going to get them on video, I’m going to show you, and you will eat your words, sir.”

“So, let me get this straight—” Shane pushes his chair back as well, swivels so he’s at least half facing his friend. Maybe he can talk him out of this, convince him that this whole endeavor is too stupid even for them. “Demons _are_ real, so you’re going out to fuck with them? Color me impressed, Bergara, you’re not the guy I took you for.” 

Ryan pulls a face, somewhere between disgust and terror. “I’m not going to fuck with them. You don’t fuck with demons. That’s how you get killed.” 

“So stay home,” Shane concludes, with an arch of his eyebrow as he leans back in his chair, crosses his hands casually over his stomach, and Ryan sighs, heavily, and deflates a little.

“I might, actually,” he tells him, and his face is deeply displeased as he lets his gaze fall to the floor, “Brent’s moving back home, and now I’ve got no co-host. I mean. I think I’m gonna try get into a haunted house with TJ, but—“ He laughs, nervously, “I might just shit myself and cancel the show.”

“I’ll come. I’ll be your co-host.” Shane surprises himself, hears himself speak before he’s even thought that thought through to the end, and he’s just about to backpedal, but—

Ryan lights up, surprise written all over his face, but it morphs into unbridled joy within a second.

“Really?”

And that look on Ryan’s face, well. It seals Shane’s fate.

“Yeah, really.”

*

A few weeks later, after a well-meaning talk with a priest and excursions to places that are little more than cheap tourist attractions, they find themselves in front of the Sallie house. Shane is at his best at his most insufferable, and he doesn’t waste a minute mocking the place—and draws equal amounts ire and badly hidden amusement from Ryan.

It’s a point of pride for Shane, really.

And as long as Ryan is busy being annoyed with him, he can’t tell just how on edge Shane is, too.

The ‘paranormal investigator’ that meets them there is, well. Bullshit. Ninety percent of them are, Shane reasons, maybe even ninety-nine, and he says as much, but he also doesn’t mind his presence—the more people to draw and divide attention onto, the better.

The guy has Ryan’s rapt attention, at any rate, and Shane lets him work himself up over nothing with fond amusement as they start their tour of the Sallie house, settle into the children’s bedroom to try and establish contact.

There really is no surprise when their paranormal investigator doesn’t get any response, but there’s … a _presence_ , something drawn to the obvious beacon of Ryan’s unfaltering belief and fear, and Shane can tell. He can feel it in the cold settling into his stomach, in the static in the air neither of the other two men seems to feel.

Ironically, he thinks, whatever is lurking in the dark, wouldn’t even take note of them if it weren’t for Ryan, his constant muttering, his very obvious fear. Shane can hear scratching on the floor, he can feel something drawing closer.

So Shane shines his light onto the teddy bear, distracts, and Ryan’s relief when he huffs out a laugh softens some of the tension, makes the shadows draw back into their corners.

For now.

*

By the time they make it into the kitchen, Shane can’t deny that they have drawn the attention of _something_ , and it has latched on, now. Ryan is like a damned lighthouse, projecting his fear everywhere, and whatever _it_ is, it’s circling Ryan.

So Shane steps up.

“We met this guy, Father Thomas. He told us not to talk to you, but I think you guys are swell—” Ryan is glaring at him, telling him he’s fucking crazy, and Shane just chuckles, but he knows, he can feel it, that whatever has been trailing them has shifted its attention to him. 

“If you like the guys staying here, turn the light on.” The ghost hunter is talking again, but the darkness has zoned in on Shane, now, and he knows it, feels it the way he could feel someone staring at his back, boring daggers into him.

“If you _don’t_ like us, turn it on,” Shane says, crouched next to the light, rising to the challenge.

The light flicks on.

The room—Ryan and ghost guy—erupt into chaos, and Shane laughs, both because their reactions are worth it, but also to let whatever ‘Sallie’ is know that he’s not taking it seriously. 

But it’s on, now. And under all the laughter, all the taunting, Shane’s not particularly thrilled about it.

*

Sallie’s watchful gaze doesn’t leave them as they roll out their sleeping bags in the living room, once everyone else has left, both TJ the cameraman and Mark (Mark? Matt? Shane hasn’t really been paying attention that much) the ghost hunter, leaving Ryan and Shane to stay the night on their lonesome.

“I don’t know why I’m still here,” Ryan starts lamenting, so obviously shaken by the whole experience Shane wants to make him a cup of tea and tuck him into bed, anywhere else but here. Trouble is, he needs him to be brave.

“Well, I hate to break this to you, Ryan, but this was your idea.” 

Ryan’s resulting glare only makes him laugh, and Shane busies himself arranging his makeshift bed for the night, then checks the position of their camera before he grabs two bottles of beer from his bag. He holds one out to his friend, who stares at him incredulously.

“You brought _drinks_? We just made contact with a demon and you want to crack open a cold one? This isn’t a sleepover, Shane!”

“It kind of is. A sleepover, with demons.” 

“You’re not funny, Madej,” Ryan tells him, still in disbelief, before he sighs in resignation and grabs one of the bottles, “But I _will_ take that beer.” 

Shane grins, raises his beer in a salute, and takes the first swig.

The less attention they pay to the demonic presence, the less its powers work—and Shane is all about distracting Ryan, even as he can feel Sallie clawing at the back of his mind, whispering suggestions of things he refuses to acknowledge. 

Ryan settles down next to him on his sleep bag, cross-legged, and nurses his beer. “I don’t know how you can stay so calm,” he tells him, with all the reverence that questions at a sleepover around 2 a.m. deserve, “You gave the damn demon my name and everything.”

“I marked you,” Shane explains, then waggles his eyebrows, and Ryan swats at him even as he starts laughing. “Now the demon knows it can’t have you without me.”

“Oh, even better, I’m gonna get my soul dragged to hell and you’re gonna be there the whole way, awesome.” But the chuckle in his voice belies any real annoyance, and Shane’s smile is self-satisfied as he makes himself more comfortable, leaning back until he’s resting on his elbows.

“Yeah, that would be a real concern if demons were real. Lucky for you, they’re not.” 

_Liar liar liar liar,_ Sallie whispers into his ear.

*

The atmosphere shifts to something a little less light-hearted, once they finally settle in for sleep and Ryan’s thoughts have some good twenty minutes to _really_ ruminate. It really doesn't take terribly long, and it's not another second past 3:03 a.m. that Ryan has enough.

“Fuck this.”

Shane laughs, rolls over onto his side, and focuses his attention on Ryan, wide-awake and staring at the dark ceiling with unmasked terror. It would be almost endearing, how open Ryan carries everything he feels about this, if it weren’t bait dangled in front of whatever entity creeps around the building that doesn’t quite dare to jump them yet.

“I’m getting out of here. This is not happening.”

“Ryan…” There’s more soft chuckling, but by god, Shane won’t stop him, half of him wants to throw Ryan over his shoulder and march right out, because the presence never left. It just doesn’t want to cross him to get to Ryan, and rightfully so. 

And still, he can’t help teasing Ryan. “It’s silly to give up at the last minute, but—” Ryan being bolder would help their case, too, if he could _actually_ not be afraid, but it’s not happening, not tonight, and he hopes he’s done messing with demons, for now.

And then Shane almost does a double take, Ryan’s words pulling him from his reverie as he already gets their stuff together. “Did you just call the demon a motherfucker?” He’s laughing, a surprised huff, and even though he can still hear the scratching in the walls, the cold seeping in, it’s too late now for Sallie, and it knows.

 _We’re done here_ , he thinks, and he hears the howling, but it’s over, and Ryan is already out the door.

*

Shane can’t resist flipping the old house off when Ryan’s not looking, and his shoulders drop finally with the release of tension once the car door shuts behind him. The Sallie house looks perfectly mundane, now, in their rearview mirror, and Shane is pretty glad to see it shrink into the background, but he tries his best to stay as blasé as ever, while Ryan downright revels in the distance to the house with every mile passed. 

*

Ryan’s folded uncomfortably on the carpet of the airport lounge, in a way that makes Shane’s neck ache just watching him and their faithful cameraman TJ snooze. He wants so badly to join them, he feels sapped of all his energy after daring something or other to go toe to toe with him all night, all so it doesn’t focus on someone else. 

But they agreed that one of them would stay awake, in case any of their flights got delayed or moved gates, and Shane takes first watch, insisting that he’s fine, he should be, after all, since he didn’t believe in any of the ongoings last night, right?

And being awake by himself gives him time to reflect in quiet on the days they’ve had: the Winchester house has been just about a tourist scam, the island of haunted dolls an urban myth that spun out of control, and the Sallie house…

Well. 

One hit for three wasn’t a bad quota, and yet Shane would highly prefer the quota to be zero for no matter how many. Whatever Sallie is, it’s not powerful, not powerful enough, and it will stay right where it is, and Ryan has moved far out of its reach now. The way Shane likes it.

And Ryan doesn’t even _know_ , has no idea what they really faced that night, he just believes, unwaveringly, in the beyond, and Shane watches him sleep with equal amounts relief that they are safe on their way home, and concern for what that boy has in store for him next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand we're still here, RPF hell! Seriously, thank you to this fandom for being so welcoming and encouraging <3


	2. the whaley house

After their prolonged excursion through several states and one haunted doll island, they focus on a few things they can discuss in their usual fashion—Ryan and Shane seated at their desk in front of a camera, going through Ryan’s research, Shane debunking with confidence everything he can. This he doesn’t mind; this is nice, and safe, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

It’s a little due to budget restraints, Shane knows this, and as soon as Ryan gets permission to reach a little higher, he presents him with the Whaley house.

On the inside, Shane groans. On the outside, as nonchalantly as he can, he says, “yeah, sure. Lead the way.”

*

The atmosphere of the place is not terribly unpleasant, Shane would say. The busy San Diego street outside is a welcome contrast, bustling with life as it is, but the Whaley house is dark and unlit, intentionally, as one would expect from a haunted house. It’s still a nice house, kept up nicely, and they trail around it, through the backyard, before Ryan has to face his fears and actually go inside.

Shane kind of wants to make a comment about how any place that shepherds paying customers through might not be all that haunted, but Ryan is already psyching himself out just standing in front of the house, so Shane agrees, amused, to be the first to walk into.

It’s a little impressive, Shane thinks, how scared Ryan of these places is, and yet he still seeks them out. 

“Almost any old house is going to have some sad history,” he points out, even though he feels a little colder in here than he did outside, once Ryan has explained the varied history of the place—the home of a sad family, with a dead infant and a suicided daughter, the jury room, the theater. He doesn’t really feel like they are not the only ones here, tonight, and he hears Ryan sputter behind him, and it’s still enough to make him laugh.

*

“So…” They’re standing in what has been, apparently, the daughter’s room, staring at a whole lot of nothing. Well. One of them is, whereas Shane tries his best to ignore the lady standing in the doorway in her period dress watching them. The dark stain on her dress, on her chest, gives him some idea who she is. “This is pretty boring.”

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan whispers, but they both feel the cold breeze that suddenly sweeps through the room, and Shane grimaces, in the dark where he can’t really be seen, when he spots the almost transparent shape of a cat move through the room, illuminated ever so barely by the light falling in through the windows, and making a beeline towards Ryan.

Maybe he shouldn’t have joked about ghost animals.

Shane yawns, stretches. “We should probably check out one of the other rooms, before I doze off and you mistake my snoring for EVP.”

“I mean—you gotta give these ghosts a little time, they don’t really respond to command.” Ryan’s complaining, but not enough to stay in the room by himself, and he trails after Shane after only a second of hesitation.

*

“Oh, fuck, I feel very weird all of a sudden.”

“Why do you feel weird?” 

Two rooms over and down the stairs, they have settled down in the uncomfortable wooden chairs of the jury room, and Shane looks around with lazy interest. 

Shane doesn’t have to ask, not really. He also can’t blame Ryan for feeling weird—Violet Whaley, he assumes from description, has taken the seat next to him, her hands primly folded in her lap, regarding him with distant interest.

His own flashlight, aimed at Ryan, has just turned off, like they don’t want to be seen, but he knows they have been slowly but surely following them ever since they came in.

“I just felt a chill run down my back.”

Shane keeps a straight face while Ryan talks, his eyes fixed on the tiny screen of his camera instead of Ryan, because on the screen he doesn’t have to see Violet, the way she leans over and inspects his friend a little more closely. It makes the hairs on his own neck stand up, but he downplays it, because… 

Because he really doesn’t need Ryan to freak out more. He can do that on his own.

“I know you don’t believe me, I can see the look on your face right now.”

Shane smiles down into his camera, but nods, and hopes Ryan can’t see the beads of sweat on his forehead. 

“Well, come on then, let’s change seats,” he suggests and gets up a little too quickly to be nonchalant, but Ryan is equally eager to get out of his chair, and he steps away just in time for Violet to reach into nothingness. 

Shane breathes out a sigh of relief, and the girl leaves him alone once he takes Ryan’s spot.

*

“Everyone who lived here thought the place has been cursed,” Ryan explains reverently as he leads the way to the parlor, where apparently Violet bled out after she shot herself and another person was hanged.

“That’s got to be terrible on property prices,” Shane points out with a shrug, and Ryan shoots him a look over his shoulder and shakes his head, but he chuckles.

“You know what? You’re _that_ guy in every horror movie.”

“What guy?” 

“The guy. The guy that goes ‘oh, honey, sure, twelve people got murdered here under mysterious circumstances, but look how cheap the land is!’” Ryan’s best imitation of Shane sounds suspiciously hick-like, and Shane starts laughing.

“‘Oh, look at the view, dear, you can barely tell they used to hang people in front of this very window!’” Shane chimes in, and Ryan giggles even as he continues to shake his head in disbelief.

“You’re fucking impossible, I hope you know.”

*

Ryan, predictably, hates the idea of spending time alone in the parlor, but this is a show, still—and Ryan, the bravest guy scared of everything, convinces himself to sit in a chair in the middle of the room, as long as Shane goes first.

Considering the ghosts seemed to have been leaving them alone the past few minutes, Shane doesn’t mind at all.

So he finds himself sitting in the dark, staring at a predictable amount of nothing.

He can hear a baby crying faintly in the house somewhere, but considering it’s not followed by Ryan screaming, he assumes he’s the only one who can hear it.

Ghosts don’t really care for him, he’s noticed. They follow Ryan around, all his curiosity and his belief and the fear he’s projecting everywhere. Shane? Shane couldn't interest them less.

So he starts talking to himself, because it’s better television, and because that way, he can’t hear the wailing infant, at least.

*

By the time it’s Ryan’s turn for five minutes in solitude, he has properly psyched himself out, as expected. It’s … a little endearing, and Shane tries his best not to tease him too much, lest he back out.

Shane stays outside the door with TJ, long-suffering cameraman extraordinaire, and they both try to stay quiet while Ryan mutters to himself, trying to calm himself down.

It’s hard for both of them not to chuckle—and suddenly there’s surprised screaming coming from inside, and Ryan’s shouting for both of them through the door.

“Okay, is one of you messing with me?”

Shane stays where he is, arches an eyebrow at TJ, tries to pretend there isn’t a shiver running down his back. “What are you talking about?” He calls back, but Ryan stays where he is, suffers through his whole five minutes before he comes out a little shaken, but upright.

“Was that sound you? I thought you scared an owl in there,” Shane tells him, eyes on his screen, camera on Ryan, and his friend glares up at him.

“Fuck you, dude.” His words aim for heated, but he’s laughing with relief over being out of the room, that sudden release of tension. “Someone whispered at me. I could hear it. I could _feel_ the breath in my ear.”

The door to the parlor stays open, and Shane chances a glance inside, at the fellow standing in the middle of the room with vacant eyes and dark marks around his neck. _Get out_ , he mouths at them.

“Yeah, let’s wrap this up before the neighbors come knocking that you woke them up at 3 a.m.,” Shane suggests, lips pursed and nodding, and feels an immense gratitude that whoever just tried to contact Ryan doesn’t follow them to the living room, where they wrap up their episode. Fifteen minutes later they lock up and pile into the car, another mystery unsolved.

*

They get into Los Angeles late on their drive back from San Diego, and Shane worries, a little, that Ryan will fall asleep at the wheel of his car as they move sluggishly through Los Angeles nighttime traffic.

“Do these things really not bother you?”

Their cameraman has taken an uber into a different direction, and it’s just the two of them now, sleep-deprived and semi-useless.

“No, not really.” Shane’s leaning his head against the car window, watching the lights pass by, and tries his damndest to forget the sad, empty eyes of Violet Whaley, tries to ignore that he feels like something or other is still trailing them—or, well. Ryan, to be precise. “Ghosts don’t exist, remember?”

Ryan rolls his eyes, before he sleepily rubs at them with one hand, the other clutching the steering wheel a little too tightly. “I’m still fucking shaken because some ghost is whispering in my ear, and you’re just shrugging it all off like it’s nothing.”

Shane raises his eyebrow, and wets his lips for a second as he thinks. “Hey, uh—” He grimaces while he’s still looking out the window, then turns to Ryan with a more neutral expression, “You can stay at my place tonight, if you want.”

Ryan opens his mouth to respond, but Shane’s quicker, “It’s closer, and I don’t trust you to drive alone for even a minute,” so his friend doesn’t have to admit whether or not he feels comfortable being alone tonight.

There’s a soft, guilty chuckle coming from Ryan, but he still nods after a moment’s thought. “I—yeah. Yeah, you got a point,” he admits, a little sheepishly, before he flashes Shane a smile, and that expression makes something warm and gooey blossom in Shane’s gut, and he hates himself for it, a little.

*

They stumble into Shane’s apartment dragging their traveling bags behind them, and they get dropped first thing through the door, where one of them will probably trip over them later.

There are herbs in a bowl on the windowsill, and Shane casually lights them on his way to the kitchen.

“What is—dude, is that sage?”

Shane pulls a face, shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s one of those incense things, a friend got me that.” It’s a lie, but he’s got his back turned to Ryan, and he figures it’s believable enough.

“That’s totally sage,” Ryan says behind him, with some bemused wonderment, “Did you know sage is supposed to cleanse your place of bad energies?”

There’s a chuckle coming from the kitchen, and Shane emerges with two bottles of beer a second later, hands one over to Ryan unasked, “You think my friend was trying to tell me I got bad mojo?”

“I mean…” Ryan trails off, but he breaks out into a grin a second later, “Are they wrong?”

Shane clutches dramatically at his chest, and drops down onto the couch with a thud, “I am hurt, Ryan. Deeply, deeply hurt.”

His friend just laughs, and once he’s shrugged out of his jean jacket settles down on the couch next to him.

For a few long moments, they fall into a comfortable kind of silence as the smell of sage slowly filters through the room and the beer does the rest, letting the nerves of the past day and the buzz slowly mellow out. Ryan’s got his feet propped up on the coffee table, and grabs the remote to turn on the tv to something inane, something blaming aliens for the construction of the pyramids. It’s little more than background noise as he sighs, contented, a little less on edge now, and sinks deeper into the couch cushions. 

It’s a comforting sight, and Shane begins to relax, too.

Slowly but surely the only foreign presence in Shane’s apartment is Ryan, and he quite likes it that way. A little bit too much, probably, he thinks, as he glances over at his sleepy friend out the corner of his eye, but doesn’t dwell on it—he never does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is... going to run longer than intended, overall. Strap on in! And, as external validation keeps me going, thanks so much for commenting and being the motivator I need <3


	3. bobby mackey's

“That _cannot_ be legally binding.”

Shane stares at the sign above the door at Bobby Mackey’s—WARNING TO OUR PATRONS—declaring the place to be haunted and that they do not take any liability for what happens on the grounds of the bar, once Ryan has done his whole little spiel about how that sign just proves that enough things happen here for someone to hang that up.

Ryan laughs a little and flashes Shane a grin over his shoulder as he admits, “Yeah, it’s a little convenient, isn’t it?”

“Broke through a floorboard? That wasn’t on us, that was the demon.”

“Our onion rings made you hurl all night? Demons poisoned them.”

“Prices too high? We just gotta compensate for all these demons not paying rent, man,” Shane drawls the word ‘demons’ out into at least four syllables with his usual lilting, mocking tone, and Ryan’s still laughing when he actually walks into the bar, but he falters, lets out a deep breath.

“Okay, this is eerie.”

Ryan lets the light of his flashlight move over the interior of the empty bar, where it bounces off bottles and glasses and cabinets, which serves nicely to make the place look more derelict than it really is. Just a few hours ago, people were sitting on these very seats listening to country music and throwing back drinks, presumably without any demons spitting into their beers.

“It’s a bar, Ryan. The only thing eerie in this place is probably the tab at the end of the night. Twenty percent demon surcharge.” The last few words are said with his spookiest voice as Shane shines his own flashlight around, takes in the sights.

Sometimes he wonders if Ryan can actually feel the energy of these places they willingly walk into, or if he’s just psyching himself out so much on the way there that just about anything serves to make him jump—Shane is pretty sure it’s the latter, whereas he himself can feel a certain cold creeping in, the kind that doesn’t come from outside, followed by the familiar, unmistakable feeling of being watched as Ryan walks them through the place.

“Apparently there was a trapdoor here that leads directly to the portal to hell downstairs, and they, uh, would drop bodies down there.”

Shane looks up again as Ryan shines light into what is now a bathroom, both of them crowded together in a tight hallway, bookended by TJ and the camera on one end, the wall on the other, but the feeling hasn’t left, and Shane feels cornered, like his skin is suddenly too tight and he needs to be anywhere but here.

What he says, instead is, “Nowadays they drop something else in here,” in a tone that suggests a wink and a nudge, and Ryan chuckles and agrees. 

It’s enough to make the feeling subside, a little, for the moment.

*

“Aren’t you afraid of anything?”

Like every place they visit, Bobby Mackey’s has a suspicious overabundance of history: from slaughterhouse to mob den to apparently cultist hideout, Bobby Mackey’s has it all, and Ryan has explained most of its backstory to Shane by the time they make their way up to the caretaker’s old place.

Shane makes a little ‘eh’ noise in response to the question and shrugs, and Ryan just rolls his eyes at him as he leads the way up to the apartment above the haunted bar. He’s been taunting whatever haunts this place ever since they stepped in—wusses—and so far, very little has actually happened.

The tiny apartment doesn’t look great, per se. It doesn’t necessarily look haunted, either, except by bad housekeeping, maybe. Like everywhere they go, and he says as much. 

They casually inspect the place, and Ryan doesn’t seem to hear the tapping coming from behind the wall, the scratching coming from somewhere beyond, all his attention focused on the things he can actually see and being disproportionally creeped out by the mundane.

“I’m afraid of contracting tetanus and breaking through moldy floorboards, if it’s any consolation,” Shane whispers, once he leans down enough to speak next to Ryan’s ear in the dark room, and his friend elbows him half-heartedly in response.

“Dick.”

He is also mildly concerned about the source of the noise, the whispers behind the walls, the way he can almost make out voices at the back of his mind. They haven’t encountered a single ghost in this place—Ryan has been getting spooked by shadows and lights, but ghosts?

No Johanna, no dead lover, no murdered father, nothing. Either the whole history of the place was made up, or… Shane grimaces. Usually, every ghost they pass takes note of Ryan and makes themselves known.

And yet, no such luck tonight.

“It certainly looks like a room where you would lose your mind,” Ryan points out, and Shane would have to agree.

The noises haven’t stopped. Whatever this is, it’s subtler than little Sallie was, older, too, but however much it has seeped into the walls of the place, the history of it, it’s also weakened with time.

Ryan notices the little footstool pinning the closet shut, and Shane winces internally when he notices, too. So that’s where the scratching he has been hearing ever since they got up here has been coming from.

“You come over here and open this.” Which is how far Ryan’s bravery extends—sending Shane in first. “It says ‘danger, do not enter, keep out.’”

“Well, why would we go in there?” Shane whispers back, trying to dissuade Ryan and his sudden bout of bravery from getting any closer, but as if on cue, the closet doors start slowly swinging open, as far as the little stool allows them to. 

Ryan moves closer, moves the little stool out of the way, and opens the door to peer into it. The low growl grows louder, a preternatural darkness seeping out of the open door, creeping closer to his oblivious friend.

Internally, Shane sighs his heaviest sigh, and steps in front of Ryan. Immediately he feels colder, but this isn’t the time to be scared.

“Whoa, they got Peter Franklin tapes in here…” Shane swings the flashlight around a little, ignoring the scraping under the floorboards, the cold creeping up his legs. “And Springsteen!” And with that, he steps in, to make his point that no, he will not be intimidated. 

Behind him, Ryan laughs.

It works, and the entity withdraws.

*

The basement is somehow even less inviting than Carl’s apartment was, which isn’t even a particularly low bar to cross. The bullet holes in the wall help sell the atmosphere, and it would be utterly fascinating on its own, but the deep growl coming from somewhere beneath their feet is distracting Shane a little from the scenery.

“That’s a nice thought, isn’t it? Demons made them do it.” 

His light is still focused on the bullet holes, and he looks over at Ryan, who incredulously asks, “How is that a nice thought?” 

“Because people just kill people, zero demonic influence needed,” Shane points out matter-of-fact, “Wouldn’t it be nicer to think they weren’t capable of that?” 

Ryan grimaces and shakes himself, as if a cold shiver just ran down his back. “Dark, dude. That’s dark.”

Shane shrugs, and Ryan continues pulling a face, and there’s a slight uproar—whatever lies beyond doesn’t like being discredited like this, and it leaves Shane feeling more than a little satisfied.

Ryan leads the way to a small niche in the wall, a cage that used to serve as a makeshift cell, and Shane tries not to dwell too much on how dreadful that must have been. They place the flashlight on a small ledge carved into the stone of the back wall of the cell—where it promptly turns off by its own volition, letting darkness swallow them whole. 

“Now what?”

Shane’s lips are pulled into a thin line. He must have been distracted; by Ryan, by his own thoughts, by his own thoughts about Ryan, by any number of things, but he missed how close the entity had already drawn, and that’s the kind of lapse he really can’t afford.

“I, uhm—” They’re sitting close enough in the dark that Shane’s knee is bumping into Ryan’s, and the slight tremors he can feel reverberating through Ryan’s knee aren’t from the cold alone, he’s pretty sure.

“Now what, Ryan?” He repeats, over the steadily growing thrum under their feet, the growl of something coming closer and closer. 

“Shut up, Shane.”

Shutting up is the very last thing he wants to do, because the growling hasn’t gotten any quieter, the temperature has dropped a few more degrees, and if it weren’t so dark, Shane is pretty sure he could see his breath by now.

“ _Demon_. Turn it on, if you’re planning to do us harm, tonight.”

Nothing, and Ryan’s talking, rationalizing, his brain probably still spinning that the light turned off in the first place. 

“Turn it on if you want to hurt us.”

The light flashes on, and Shane arches an eyebrow upward. Ryan, for his part, curls in on himself and starts cursing, “Fucking— shit, god, why do you keep asking it questions like that? Do you want to die?”

“It’s just a coincidence.”

He gets louder, more daring, ramps it up quickly. Ryan can’t see or hear anything—and by God, Shane’s glad for it, because this isn’t something he would take well, he thinks. It has to be a testament to Ryan’s character that he can’t pick up on these things, that he can’t hear those lilting whispers, those tempting empty promises, those quiet calls to action…

Shane can, and he feels a clammy, bone-deep cold, hissing at the back of his mind.

They don’t want Shane—and Ryan they can’t have. He keeps walking into these dens of residual evil, reeking of innocence, radiating all things good and comforting, with open eyes and an open mind, and Shane keeps standing between him and everything that’s drawn to him like moths to the light, ready, oh so willing, and able to sink their claws into him. 

Shane supposes he’s just as much of a moth as the rest of them. And he’s going to make sure none of them ever get close enough to touch.

“Plunge us into darkness, demons!” Shane’s shouting by now. “Demons! Demons, you cowards!” And when nothing happens, he can’t help but laugh, in part at Ryan, in part in relief, “No, it’s just—it’s a bunch of bologna, man. Can we check some other rooms here?”

And he’s out of his seat before he’s even done talking, with Ryan following quickly behind.

*

Locking themselves one by one in whatever dark crevice the haunted house of the week has to offer is becoming part of the deal, and the well room with the supposed portal to hell is where they are going to do it.

Because _of course_ they are.

He has already made his point—leaving Ryan to head into this chamber by himself, heading into on his own a little later, it’s as much as a dare as it is a measure of strength. But it is just two minutes, and the place doesn’t have a door, so Shane, for all the growling and implied threats have him on edge, isn’t too concerned.

Less concerned than Ryan, at any rate, who he can hear muttering to himself walking around in the dark, and who just radiates relief when he comes out of the little chamber again, once his two minutes in hell are up. 

_Dick measuring contest, is what it is_ , Shane thinks to himself, and tries hard not to roll his eyes as he steps into the dark room. Unless Bobby Mackey’s demon is building up to a grande finale, his reach has long decayed. There’s a rope loosely tied around his waist, for him to tug on in case things get bad, and—and for Ryan to pull him out?

He’s not entirely sure what the rope is for, but if it comforts Ryan, that’s good enough for him. 

“Hey there, demons, it’s me, ya boi.”

There’s a sigh almost audible in that sentence. They know, he knows, all that’s missing is formal introductions. 

“Frankly, I don’t believe in you—” _Because if you still had any sort of power, you would have done something already_ , is the part he doesn’t say out loud. He’s talking to the camera, to Ryan, maybe, less to whatever lingers in the demon hole, in the old walls of Bobby Mackey’s, and he rambles on for a little while. 

“If you wanna pick me up or scratch me or slam me into the ceiling now would be the best opportunity for that. Do understand I do have a rope here, so, you know—” The uselessness of the rope dawns on him once more, and he shrugs, “Maintaining silence now. _Do_ try to kill me.”

For long seconds, as predicted, nothing at all happens. Shane thinks about whether he still has eggs and milk in his fridge, when the last time was he did his laundry—and then he trips forward with a sudden push from behind, a hot searing pain shoots down his back for just a second, and—and it worries him less than the knowledge that he has to be tugging on the rope by now, alerting Ryan to something going on, how he will have to explain this away or delete the footage or—

“Are you trying to fuck with me, you—” Ryan supplies an answer himself from outside, and Shane huffs out a “yeah” even as he tries to calm his nerves, ignores that he can still hear the blood rushing in his ear, feel his heartbeat all the way to his throat, and walks out of the chamber as if nothing’s happened, as if his back doesn’t ache with every step.

 _Fucking asshole_ , Shane thinks, _wouldn’t dare try me if Ryan wasn’t here._

But there is very little he can do without alerting Ryan to the fact that either demons are, in fact, real, or that he has completely and utterly lost his mind.

Neither option is particularly attractive to him.

“It’s been fun, Bobby Mackey,” Shane says, feeling more smug than he has any right to over the fact that they’re leaving, and Ryan's none the wiser for the ongoings of the place.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Ryan’s almost out the door already, gloating cheerfully about leaving the place.

He shakes himself out on the way to the car, warming up again, and by the time they’re in the car, the relief is palpable. It still doesn’t save Shane from a lecture by Ryan in the car, though, which he bears with patient amusement.

*

“Aren’t you worried that some demon will, like, grab you and drag your soul to hell or something? Taunting them and all that?”

There are circles of sleep deprivation under his eyes, the way there often are after their sleepless nights spent wandering around haunted places, but Ryan’s chowing down with enthusiasm on syrup drenched waffles nonetheless, sending crumbs flying every which way.

“Nah.” Shane is slunk down low in the opposite bench from his friend, in a twenty-four hour diner somewhere in Kentucky. It’s a little while yet until their flight home, and while they won’t manage to make up for sleep lost, at least they can indulge in sweet, sweet carbs—and coffee, Shane’s nursing his second cup in twenty minutes, letting the smell of waffles and bacon waft over him and the steam from his mug fog up his glasses. “I already sold my soul to the devil. If they want it, they’ll have to take it up with the big guy.”

Outside it’s gray and rainy, and he’s pretty happy to just exist in their warm little bubble of coffee, waffles, and warmth for now.

Ryan squints at him for half a second, like he’s genuinely considering the veracity of his statement, before he cracks and huffs out a laugh as he grabs his own mug of coffee. “You’re such a shit. What would you even sell your soul for?”

“Oh, the usual, you know. Fame, wealth, women—”

“You got none of those, Shane. Sounds like you got kind of a bum deal there.” Ryan tilts his head to the side and raises his eyebrows at him over the rim of his cup of coffee, and Shane nods with feigned thoughtfulness. 

“Yeah, I should probably check that contract again. Think the devil does refunds?” He finally puts his coffee down and grabs a fork so he can start stealing waffles from Ryan’s plate, who only duels him with his own fork for a few seconds. “Plus, you know. That whole thing where they don’t exist helps.”

There’s a painful sting running down his back in the telltale shape of three deep scratches that he doesn’t mention to Ryan, even as he keeps trying to shift his position in such a way he doesn’t have to lean directly on it, but also doesn’t highlight his discomfort. 

It pales, anyway, to that sinking feeling in his gut when he realizes with sudden, startling clarity that there is very little he wouldn’t do to keep his friend out of harm’s way—startling clarity followed by something like fond resignation.

“It is what it is,” Shane mumbles to himself, and when Ryan ask “what?” around a mouthful of waffle, he just laughs and shakes his head.

It is what is, whatever that may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, chapter three! Thanks so much everyone for coming on this ride with me so far and all your encouraging words :D


	4. the bizarre voodoo world of new orleans

“Why aren’t we doing this more often?” 

Ryan has to shout over the music filtering out of the bar, over the people down on the street, drunk and hollering, and Shane can’t come up with a single good reason why: paying out of their own pockets to prolong their trip to New Orleans is one of the better decisions they have made in a while—they have the Dauphine Orleans hotel to check out and they have some time with a voodoo queen on the horizon, but also: a night out on Bourbon Street.

(Shane supposes several of their co-workers figure they are doing this show exclusively for the trips to interesting places, but considering they spend half their time sleeping on dirty floors in rickety buildings, they have earned a stay at a nice place for once, he would argue.)

They have spent their first day in New Orleans being tourists, and now, a few hours later, Shane’s tipsy—no, that’s a lie, he’s several sheets to the wind, after one too many beers, and maybe a few other drinks, and he’s drunk off the atmosphere of New Orleans, the warm air, the good company. He’s leaning heavily on the railing off the balcony of the bar they’re at, so he doesn’t topple over, maybe, and he’s letting the breeze sweep through his hair, and he’s… he’s content.

He’s pretty damn happy, actually.

Next to him, Ryan’s laughing, loud and delighted, and he’s the giggly kind of drunk now, tossing beaded necklaces down into the crowds. The music coming from down in the street mingles with the music from the bar in a way that is pretty cacophonous, but it’s not like any of them really notice.

Shane sometimes wonders why he signed onto this, the ghost hunting, the encounters of the weird kind, letting Ryan convince him to sleep in musty, broken down places time and again, but nights like these, it makes a little more sense.

Something lurches in his stomach, and it hits him like a tidal wave, that sudden realization, and for a second, he stares at Ryan wide-eyed.

“Oh, fuck me,” he mumbles, clutches his beer a little tighter, and Ryan turns to him with a questioning look.

“You good?” Ryan still looks exuberant, still giggly, and Shane shakes his head with a rueful smile and gives a dismissive wave of his hand that already sends him stumbling.

“All good. I’ll grab a few more brewskis,” he tells him, even though half the words get lost in the noise, and he strongly considers throwing himself off the balcony when the butterflies in his stomach persist, so he sways his way back to the bar instead to drink himself into oblivion.

*

(Sharing a Jacuzzi tub doesn’t really help his problem and the butterflies continue to stay stubborn despite the pillow wall separating their sides of the bed in the Dauphine Orleans hotel, and while Ryan stays wide awake because ghosts make terrible hotel guests, Shane stays wide awake for entirely different reasons.)

*

Their next day is chock full of things to do, and Shane is unusually grateful for it. They spend their first foray into voodoo with visits to stores and a trip to the cemetery, but there’s nothing particularly supernatural about the graveyard they visit, only to stand in front of it, locked out like the rest of the general public, and the lack of tact with which Ryan just shouts for the ghost of Marie Leveau, supposedly still walking the grounds, makes him laugh.

But it’s a short excursion. There’s not much they can do, with Shane peering over the graveyard wall and Ryan hopping up and down to catch glimpses, and voodoo queen Bloody Mary awaits them. 

And Bloody Mary is a _character_ , capital C, and both Ryan and Shane are instantly taken with her. Her house is as colorful as she is—the room they sit in is stuffed bottom to top with dolls and other paraphernalia, and she explains to them what she does, what they are about to see, tonight, and they shoot a little bit of their conversations as they walk through New Orleans, all the way to their final destination for the day: Bloody Mary's future haunted museum. 

The old house is, well. As decrepit as most of the places they go to, maybe even a little more so, but respectfully, Shane refrains from saying as much. Instead, Shane watches the ritual their gracious guide performs before they enter through the doorway with pleased curiosity, but once they enter, the place seems as abandoned as it looks. Maybe it’s that there’s three of them, or that the house is on a crowded street, but it’s quiet, for now.

Bloody Mary instructs Ryan on channeling in a room upstairs, whereas Shane and the camera guy head downstairs, inspecting the empty house, where Shane talks mostly to himself and the camera—and then the temperature drops, all of a sudden, and Shane tenses up.

“Yeah, I’m not—not picking up. Let’s go see what Ryan’s doing,” he tells the camera, a bit hasty, and almost walks into TJ on his way out of the small downstairs bathroom.

Upstairs, Ryan is sitting in a chair in the middle of a dark room, eyes closed, and Mary explains that he’s channeling, explains that there used to be a little boy named Abe here, that Ryan’s establishing contact.

Not that she has to tell him. The little boy is sitting cross legged on the floor in front of Ryan, watching him with curiosity. 

Shane apologizes for interrupting, but he’s not sorry for even a second. It’s enough that Ryan’s concentration is broken, and he looks up at Shane, manages a shaky smile, even, and then it’s time for Mary to leave them to the house on their own.

And whoever else lingers.

*

They continue their exploration, and the two of them take a seat in one of the many dark rooms, waiting for a reaction.

Ghosts fucking love Ryan—they are drawn to him, all of them, and they never even take note of Shane. They wouldn’t even if Ryan weren’t around, but that’s a different story altogether.

But they downright flock to Ryan. They don’t know why, he doesn’t think, just like Ryan will never know, but Shane reasons it’s the unwavering belief, that almost innocent curiosity and open mind with which he approaches these places has something to do with it.

It’s endearing, after all.

So, really, Shane isn’t surprised when the ghostly child from earlier shows up again. What he assumes to be Abe climbs onto the bench they’re sitting on and he carefully steps over Shane’s shoulders, if clumsily, the way children sometimes do when they don’t want to ask people to move, unaware of the space they take up, and steps onto his jean jacket as he does, holds onto his shoulder to steady itself.

“My jacket just moved in a way—that it felt like someone touched me on the shoulder,” Shane points out, with a glance at the spot where a small spectral hand just touched him, “And if I—if I think you had felt it, you would scream.”

It’s not like he wants Ryan to be aware of these ghosts, scared as he already is, but he does want this to be a good show. And at least a little bit, he wants to give him some of the truth he’s always looking for. But it’s not a veil he can just close again, once it’s pulled back.

The boy-shaped apparition ignores Shane entirely, and settles down on the back of the bench next to Ryan, who doesn’t seem to notice.

“Did you just—did you just comment on something that may have been paranormal?” Ryan sounds both surprised and a little gleeful, but Shane deflects habitually, and Abe does nothing more to interact with them.

*

Now that Mary is gone, the remaining inhabitants of the house are less reluctant to come out. The house has, of course, a murderous history, and there’s a desolate young woman wandering the halls, but she seems self-absorbed, uninterested in the guys and any ongoings in her former home.

And Shane and Ryan do what they always do—lock themselves into darkened rooms on their own. It goes as uneventful as expected for Shane, and Ryan, well. He’s losing his mind even in the company of their camera man, and then it’s his turn already.

“Oh, shit.” He can hear Ryan cursing from inside the small dark room, can hear him mumbling something about something touching his shirt, and—

Well. If he’s kind of a dick about holding the door shut when Ryan tries to bust out, Shane can’t help himself, but the laughter cuts the tension, and that’s good enough for him. The room had been empty when Shane had been in it; now, at second glance, Abe is sitting on the window sill, curiously watching Ryan leave. 

Shane grimaces.

*

By the time Bloody Mary pops back in, the boy has made absolutely no move to leave Ryan alone yet, but he is keeping a more respectful distance than he was. Mary doesn’t acknowledge him, to Shane’s utter lack of surprise—he doesn’t want to call her a hoax, but ghosts are … fidgety things, and the kid is focusing all his attention on Ryan still.

When they were still standing in front of Bloody Mary’s own eclectic house, Ryan mused that letting spirits in, inviting them, was probably what made it a gathering place for anything passing by—Shane supposes he was right about that, and after several hours in this particularly place, even he is feeling a little on edge.

But Mary closes the door to ‘the other place’, leads them both outside and bids them good night. They chat about a few professional things; when the episode will air, if she will get to look at it before they release it, and it’s a good twenty minutes before they really part ways.

Twenty minutes, and Abe is standing outside on the New Orleans street as well, staring at Ryan again. 

Shane is getting testier by the second.

“Come on, let’s go, we’ve had a couple long nights here,” he exclaims and feigns a yawn, and if the way he claps Ryan on the back is a little possessive, well. That’s just the way it is.

*

Halfway to the hotel, Shane excuses himself. “I gotta grab something real quick, you can go on ahead without me,” he tells the guys, and takes off before either of them can question it.

By the time Shane resurfaces a good half hour later, he’s carrying a brown paper bag that bears the logo of Voodoo Authentica, and Ryan raises an eyebrow at him the second he spots it. “Getting a little paranoid, Shane?” 

Shane flashes him a grin in response as he jogs to catch up with Ryan and TJ when they’re already entering the inner courtyard of their hotel, “I bought a haunted doll for you, wanna see?” 

Ryan grimaces, shakes his head. “You can kindly fuck all the way off with that,” he tells him, and it only makes Shane grin even more widely. TJ bids them adieu for the night before he heads to his room, and Ryan yawns wide and turns his attention to the door of his own hotel room. “Well, it’s been good—see you in the morning, Shane, if the haunted dolls don’t murder you in your sleep.”

Lips pursed, Shane deliberates for a second—there’s no good way to do this, and he sighs, internally. “Hey, Ryan?” 

Ryan looks up from where he has been fiddling with the lock of his hotel room, mostly surprised there hasn’t been a barb in return, and watches Shane pull a bottle of rum from his bag. 

“It’s our last night in New Orleans, care for a nightcap?” He holds it out as an offering, and Ryan looks at him, thinking it over for a second or two, before he shrugs and nods. 

“Your place or mine?” Shane waggles his eyebrows and Ryan just rolls his eyes in return, but he unlocks his hotel room and leads the way inside nonetheless.

*

Little Abe shows up when they have already been sitting together for a good half hour.

They have pushed the little table and two chairs of Ryan’s hotel room up under the wide open window so they can still enjoy the warm night air of New Orleans, the ambient noise of too many people still out partying and a few already swaying back to their rooms drunk. Two glasses of rum and coke stand between them, and they’re both the sleepy kind of drunk, now, with the nerves of the night settling down after their first drink. 

Shane notices the kid standing in a corner of Ryan’s room, watching them, and it sends a shiver down his spine. He has been getting used to ghosts getting attached to Ryan—but actually following him home? That’s new. Most ghosts don’t dare to leave their haunting places, from his experience, but he reasons maybe his childlike curiosity overrides his self-preservation.

Abe moves in closer, stands next to Ryan’s chair at maybe an arm’s length; a child that wants something but doesn’t want to have to ask. “Has it—has it been getting colder in here all of a sudden?” Ryan asks, visibly shivering for a moment, before he catches himself and reaches for his drink again. 

Shane has been thinking about how to get rid of the ghost ever since they left, but he’s still as stumped as he was a few hours ago; there is simply no way to do this without Ryan noticing. 

“So…” He starts, trails off as he wets his lips, and Ryan raises an eyebrow at him. “If I asked you to ignore what I’m about to do and immediately forget it, what are the odds of you doing that?”

Ryan looks at him quizzically, opens his mouth once, then takes a deep breath before he speaks, “Are you—okay, is this... Are you trying to hit on me? I mean—the rum, you waited until TJ was gone, and it’s late, and just us…”

And Shane startles, blinks at him in surprise, and then huffs out a laugh. “What? No, I mean—“ He pauses, and kind of stutters his response, “Kind of, sure, yes, but. I—well. Not… not primarily. Today.”

“Not primarily, today,” Ryan repeats, question implicit, and Shane sighs heavily as he reaches for the brown paper bag and gets up from his seat. Ryan watches, curiously, eyebrows furrowed. 

“No. That’s— not what I’m here for tonight, or for a nightcap,” Shane admits and places the bag on the small table, starts rummaging in it. “I’m actually here for him—” He looks up from the bag, and gestures at the apparition to Ryan’s left, whose gaze follows, more confused than anything else by now.

“Are you—are you fucking with me right now?” Ryan stares at thin air, then back to Shane, back to thin air, and returns his incredulous gaze to Shane, but Shane just shakes his head as he starts piling his purchases on the table: familiar white sage, a small bottle of clear liquid, a jar of salt. “Like. This is some sort of prank, right? You’re mocking me?”

The confusion is almost palpable, and Shane stops what he’s doing for a moment to pour both himself and Ryan another drink. “I really, really wish it was,” he tells him with a sigh, then looks at the things laid out on the table before he rolls up his sleeves and starts with the sage, lights one end of the bundle on fire.

Abe retreats a few steps, and it’s the first time he’s paying attention to Shane, now. “No,” he says, quietly, then, louder, “No!” Shane stares him down, sage in hand, whereas Ryan clings to his drink and watches his friend with a look of utter confusion—he looks like he is genuinely questioning the sanity of Shane, maybe his own.

“Shane, what the fuck is going on?”

And then, Abe screams. 

It’s a blood curdling _no_ , a sound that starts off like a child’s voice and morphs into something much, much worse. Ryan drops his glass, and Shane realizes Ryan can hear him now, too—he’s staring at the source of the sound, then around the room, because he still can’t see him. 

“I’m really sorry to have to do this, kid,” Shane says, unwavering, “But this isn’t your place. You need to go back to where you come from.” 

Abe keeps screaming; it feels like the pictures on the wall are shaking, like the table is, and Shane moves around the room, spreads the smoke from the smoldering sage bundle around every corner. 

And the screaming grows quieter—the apparition seems more dim, and the quieter he gets, the less he can see of him and then… silence. 

Abe has vanished. 

Ryan stares at Shane, wide-eyed and thunderstruck, his mouth agape and confusion written all over his face in bold letters. His windswept hair completes the look nicely.

“So, uh—” Shane manages a sheepish smile, smooths his hand through his own messy hair, “I guess we need to talk, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if these are taking a while to come out, I'm currently moving and it's eating up my time, BUT thanks so much for sticking with me and this story thus far <3


	5. wherein a few things get addressed.

_Ryan stares at him, wide-eyed and thunderstruck, his mouth agape and confusion written all over his face in bold letters. His windswept hair completes the look nicely._

_“So, uh—” Shane manages a sheepish smile, smooths his hand through his own messy hair, “I guess we need to talk, huh?”_

*

“What—the fuck.”

Ryan gets up out of his seat with enough force to topple the chair, and he nearly trips on his spilled glass of rum on the floor—he’s not just baffled, he’s scared, and Shane can’t blame him, not really. Considering Ryan is scared of even imagined ghosts, actually witnessing one getting banished has to be … well. Shane can’t even imagine what has to be going through Ryan’s head right now.

“You’re—you’re a fucking demon.”

“What?” Somehow, it’s Shane’s turn to stare incredulously, eyebrows drawn together. “No—what? I know you don’t always think very _highly_ of me, Ryan, but I’m not a demon.”

“Then what—what are you? What just happened?” Ryan gestures a little wildly at the whole of Shane, whose expression doesn’t change much—if anything, he looks a little hurt by that assessment—then the rest of the room.

“I’m human,” he tells him, arms defensively crossed over his chest now, “like you. Demon? How is that—how is that even a logical conclusion here. Jesus, Ryan.”

And Ryan feels a little guilty and deflates at the look on Shane’s face—for about .2 seconds, until he remembers the amount of batshit insanity he just witnessed, and his righteous indignation returns in full force. “That’s not—that’s not even an answer! That doesn’t even begin to explain what just happened!”

Shane looks around the room for a second, takes in the remainder of the sage smoke, the mess where a picture fell off the wall and the stain on the carpet where Ryan’s rum and coke is sinking into the fabric. He wonders, briefly, if anyone in the adjacent rooms heard.

“We should, uh. Probably have this conversation elsewhere. Right? Right.” Shane’s talking to himself, because Ryan refuses to answer; of all the times Ryan proclaimed that his brain was melting, this, he realizes, is what that actually looks like. Still, Shane reasons something a little more neutral, someplace that didn’t just have a ghostly visit, might help calm Ryan down, something to ground them in reality. 

Considering he’s not expecting a reaction anytime soon, Shane takes matters into his own hands, a little literally, and puts one hand on Ryan’s back, between his shoulder blades, and starts gently guiding him out of the hotel room, out into the busy street, where Ryan’s soft litany of ‘what the fuck what the fuck _what the fuck_ ’ gets drowned out by street noise.

*

By the time Shane maneuvers the two of them into the small bar across the street, Ryan has calmed down enough to be responsive, but even as he orders his beer, he keeps shooting Shane looks, ranging from suspicious to questioning to disbelieving on a loop, and he fidgets in his seat once they settle down.

“That was—that was a prank, right?” His voice sounds a little shaky, somewhere between nervous and hopeful, and Shane almost, _almost_ wants to tell him yes, everything he just saw was make believe, nothing actually happened, but… He can’t quite bring himself to say anything for a few moments.

“Right?” Ryan’s staring at Shane from across the table, in the half-dark of any good bar, but he still looks hopeful, and the music’s just loud enough that the rest of the patrons probably won’t pick up on what they’re talking about.

“I—” Shane stops again when the waiter arrives with their beers, thanks him, and finds Ryan still staring at him, unblinking. He pulls a face. “So…”

Ryan waits.

“Abe followed you back to our hotel,” Shane states, as if that alone is an explanation, as if, maybe, that’s good enough for Ryan—which it isn’t, clearly, and the cogs in Ryan’s head are turning so forcefully Shane feels like he can almost hear it. He’s a little worried they’ll jam and something will break, at this rate. So he takes a deep breath, and soldiers on. “Something did touch my jacket back at the house. Something… something did tug at your shirt, probably. I mean. I wasn’t in the room with you. But… Abe was.” 

The journey that Ryan’s face goes through is remarkable, but it settles somewhere around ‘aghast’.

“You’re kidding. You’re—you don’t even believe in any of this stuff! You—This can’t be—is TJ in on this?”

The frown on Shane’s face deepens, and he shakes his head. “I’m serious,” he tells him, his voice a little quieter, “And I don’t have to believe it, because I know.”

He is fully aware that even admitting that opens the door to more questions than answers, and Ryan seems to think something very similar, the way he just stares down at his hands for long moments. 

“So Abe was…?” Ryan trails off, letting the implicit question stand, and Shane nods, even though he still sounds like he really, really wants him to say _no, just kidding, got you good_!

“Abe was real. Well. A real ghost, I guess.” 

The horror of that realization seems to sink in, and Ryan is speechless again, his mouth wordlessly open. Shane takes the opportunity to keep going.

“He wasn’t the only one at the house. What’s her name, Annie? Addie? The murdered girlfriend. She was there, too, but she… wasn’t so responsive. But Abe, I guess, took a shining to you? They do that sometimes. They don’t usually leave their place, though.” 

He lets that stand for a while, giving Ryan the chance to digest this information, and his voice is a little squeakier than usual when he repeats, “ _They_?”

Shane licks his lips, then takes a hearty swig of his beer. Whatever bit of alcohol had been in his system after their earlier drinks is long gone, and he figures they could both use something to steady their nerves. 

“I had to… expel Abe, because I—“ He hums and haws for a second, shrugs, “I guess I figured you wouldn’t appreciate a ghostly roommate.” 

Ryan takes a suspiciously long drink of his beer, and it’s half empty when he sets it down again. “So all this time, you could… see ghosts?”

And demons, Shane thinks, but doesn’t point out, because hell, this is already a lot on Ryan, and he knows. “Sort of, yeah. I mean. I couldn’t always. Can since college, though.” 

“Why?” There is something incredibly earnest about the way Ryan looks at him, and Shane takes a very deep breath as he looks around the bar again, the few patrons still out this late, and awkwardly picks at the label on his beer.

There’s really no good way to put this, he concedes. 

“Remember how I told you I sold my soul to the devil.”

“You were fucking with me,” Ryan states, and Shane makes a face and does a little ‘eh’ gesture, shaking his hand. “You are fucking with me now.”

“I, well—“ He purses his lips, looks everywhere but at Ryan for a few moments, then sighs, heavily, “I’m not. I’m—Ryan, listen to me. I’m really, really not fucking with you.”

“What? How? _Why?_ ”

“I told you I tried a Ouija board, right? Back in college. We were kind of… fucking around with it, I guess. I mean—you know I don’t, well, didn’t believe in this stuff. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“What the fuck would you sell your soul for?”

“Uh…” Shane trails off, puffs his cheeks out as he thinks and stares at the ceiling for a second. Of all the things Shane expected to feel during this conversation, embarrassment wasn’t very high on the list, but it is certainly coming through now, and he’s awkwardly scratching the stubble on his chin. “Eternal life?”

It’s not a very convincing lie. Ryan shoots him a conspicuous look, and Shane shrugs.

“Okay, no. Then, uh. Good looks?” This time it’s Shane who raises a hand to stop Ryan, mouth already opened to speak, and gives him a look, “Don’t even say it.” So Ryan bites his tongue, but there’s very obvious amusement written over his face, which makes him seem much more like himself again, and some of the color has returned to his face as well by now.

Shane sighs heavily, then, while Ryan still stares at him, expectantly.

“For my bachelor’s degree,” he says, quickly enough that it sounds like one barely decipherable word.

“Your… bachelor’s degree?” Ryan sounds disbelieving, but in a different way now than when he simply didn’t believe him—now he _can’t_ believe it.

Shane glances at the ceiling again, before he looks at Ryan and takes a deep breath, “And a pizza.”

“Your bachelor’s degree. And a pizza,” Ryan echoes, deadpan, and stares at Shane, just stares, until Shane contemplates getting up and leaving the table, the building, maybe the country. He stays seated, however, picks apart the label on his bottle of beer, and awkwardly tries to dodge Ryan’s stare.

“Your bachelor’s degree, and a pizza.” His friend’s voice has risen something like three octaves, and Shane flinches, a little, when he also ups the volume, “ _A motherfucking pizza!_ ”

Ryan’s throwing his hands up in the air now, in complete and utter exasperation, and Shane raises his hands, tries to shush him down.

“It was a really good pizza, okay, can you please quiet down,” he tells him in an urgent whisper, but he still shrinks under Ryan’s stare that is toeing the line between furious and manic right about now.

There have been a few instances in his life when Shane has strongly considered the possibility that Ryan might one of these days straight up murder him, but the way he is burning daggers into him right now over the little diner table makes this the strongest contender yet.

Silence falls, while Ryan tries to let everything sink in, too overwhelmed with the lot of it, and they both nurse their beers quietly. Ryan opens his mouth to speak once or twice, but closes it again every time, and they continue drinking.

It’s Shane who speaks up, eventually. “It was cheesy crust.”

“What?”

“It was a cheesy crust pizza.”

“…I will fucking stab you, Shane Madej.”

*

They kind of leave it at that for the night—there are too many questions that Ryan doesn’t know how to ask yet, Shane can tell, but there is also the reality of their alarm clock going off much sooner than they would like so they can get back to Los Angeles and leave some of this madness behind.

They lapse into normality on the walk back to the hotel; they talk about editing the video, what’s on their schedule the next week, weekend plans. It’s a little threadbare, but it works.

At least up until they reach Ryan’s room and he deliberates in front of his door for a second before he turns to Shane and decidedly tells him, “There’s no way I’m sleeping in here tonight.”

Shane blinks for a moment. “We can trade. I don’t mind,” he offers and reaches out to take Ryan’s key, but his friend seems hesitant, and an awkward sort of silence falls for however long it takes Ryan to clear his throat and speak up again.

“Can we—uhm. Can we just both sleep in your room tonight?”

Given the night they have had, Shane doesn’t hesitate to agree.

*

While the two of them have, obviously, shared beds before in the name of ghost hunting, Shane can’t help but notice that they certainly haven’t shared a single bed before, and that it’s not going to work out unless they’re downright spooning. Given how much more exhausting all of this must have been, Shane insists on Ryan taking the bed.

Hence, after some very tired arguing—they must both have been awake twenty hours by now, Shane figures, and they wouldn’t be getting near enough sleep tonight anyway—Shane rolls out a comforter on the floor next to the bed, his balled up hoodie serving as a makeshift pillow, and settles down with a blanket found in the closet, while Ryan takes the bed.

And not a second after they settle in, Shane can feel the bone-deep exhaustion, how tired he really is. If he can get just three hours of sleep, maybe—

“Hey, Shane?” 

It’s a whisper in only the barest sense of the word, but Shane cracks one eye open to peer up at his friend, who has scooted to the very edge of the bed and rolled over onto his side, so he can peak over the edge and down at Shane.

“Hm?” 

“Is there anything else I should know?”

Shane thinks, hums thoughtfully. “The hot daga? It's all real,” he tells him quietly, in his most confidential whisper, and Ryan glares down at him until Shane raises his hands in a placating manner and fails to bite back his chuckle, “Okay, okay, it’s not.”

“You are so full of shit, Madej,” Ryan whispers back harshly, but there is amusement creeping back into his voice, and he stays in his position, still looking at Shane.

“What now?”

“Is there—there are no ghosts here, right? Right now?”

“No ghosts. Zero ghosts,” Shane reassures him, because Ryan’s tone is too earnest, too anxious for him to give him shit about it now, and his friend worries his lower lip between his teeth for a second before he nods.

“Okay. Okay.” He’s saying it more to himself than to Shane, and he stays right at the very edge of the bed anyway, gets comfortable as he lays down, one hand dangling off the side.

Shane quietly watches him settle in. “Hey, Ry? There’s nothing to worry about. I promise.” He reaches up to squeeze his hand reassuringly, and Ryan nods, gives a wan smile—and holds on to Shane’s hand, to his surprise.

“If you’re fucking with me, Shane, I swear—I am going to turn you into a ghost myself.”

But he doesn’t let go of his hand, and when Shane wakes up the next morning, there’s a crick in his neck and his arm is completely numb—but he would be lying if he blamed the tingling sensation he feels on that alone.

*

New Orleans marks the end of the field trip part of this season of Unsolved, and for the next few days, they don’t see much of each other: there is work left over from their time in New Orleans, swamps of emails, videos they agreed to cut, segments they need to film for other videos. 

It’s enough to make it feel like maybe nothing happened, after all, and their interactions are casual, friendly, the way they always are. 

(If Shane feels a little disappointed about it, he hides it well.)

But really, this is just what his life has been like for years now: Shane sees ghosts and the paranormal and he doesn’t tell anyone about it, no big deal.

It takes a little practice, but he manages to push it to the back of his mind. His workload helps, and he’s curled up on his couch with his laptop, going over a few last minute work emails, when his doorbell chimes.

A quick glance at the time tells him it’s half past nine in the evening, and he’s not expecting anyone—and yet, when he gets up to open the door and finds Ryan in front of it, he isn’t actually all that surprised.

“Mind if I come in?”

Pretending everything is fine, it turns out, is not in line with Ryan’s inquisitive nature.

Shane looks at him for a long moment; there’s a suspiciously heavy looking messenger bag slung over Ryan’s shoulder, but he is also holding two boxes of pizza, so Shane doesn’t hesitate much before he steps aside to let him into the apartment. 

“I’ll grab a beer,” Shane says by way of ‘hello’ and leaves Ryan to get comfortable, and by the time he returns from the kitchen, Ryan’s plopped down on his couch, both pizzas waiting on the coffee table, and his bag lies abandoned on the floor.

Shane hands him one of the beer cans, then takes the other corner of his couch. “So… You here to watch the game?” His tone is light-hearted, and they both know that he has no idea what constitutes ‘the game’ or who would be playing, and Ryan just huffs out a laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, shut up. I came with questions.”

Shane pulls a face and heaves the most theatrical sigh he can muster. “Oh, no, _anything_ but that,” he says in an exaggeratedly dramatic tone, and Ryan just rolls his eyes. 

“You’re awful. Eat your pizza and shut up.” Ryan waves at the boxes, and Shane doesn’t hesitate—“Don’t mind if I do!”—and starts digging in. Ryan, meanwhile, very obviously steels himself, and he pulls up his legs onto the couch until he’s nestled cross-legged into one corner. “So, you can see ghosts.”

There’s half a slice of pizza stuffed into Shane’s mouth, one hand held under it in case of cheese and oil drippings, but he nods, half-shrugs, then nods a little more decisively.

“And you can because—you sold your soul to the devil.” Ryan is obviously struggling with even saying it, but Shane gives a casual half a nod, thinks about it, then shakes his head.

“A demon,” he corrects, and a slice of pepperoni makes a run for it and drops onto his jeans, distracting from the situation at hand while Shane busies himself finding some tissues and dapping the fat from his pants. 

“That—” Ryan grabs a slice of pizza for himself, brows furrowed, “makes no fucking sense.”

“Eh.” Shane shrugs, reaches for his beer, and washes some of the pizza grease down. “You’re telling me. I’m just rolling with it, you know?”

The face Ryan makes speaks of something between annoyance and an utter lack of understanding for the way Shane operates, and he takes a deep breath. “Yeah, no. That’s—no. Just no.”

While Shane arches an eyebrow at him, Ryan stuffs the last of his pizza slice into his face before he wipes his hands on a nearby tissue, and grabs his bag, from where he retrieves a heavy book. 

“I’ve been reading—” Ryan holds a finger up, so Shane doesn’t get to interrupt him, “And there’s a few ways this could have gone. What happened here. But first—” For a second, he looks almost pained, “I’m going to need you to prove that you’re not just. Talking shit. Like usual.” 

Shane draws his eyebrows together quizzically. “I mean, if you want to talk to, like, your dead great-grandpa, I’m not really your guy, Ryan.”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, shut up. I’m going to—I’ve picked out where we’re taking the show next. And then you’re going to walk me through it, everything you’re seeing, alright?”

Lips pursed, Shane thinks it over, then shakes his head. “On camera? I can’t do that, Ryan. They’ll pick me up with a straightjacket the second we get into LA.”

“Well, yeah, and that’s overdue, but no. No, we’re going to go in without the crew first, and then the second night, we just. Do the show. Like nothing’s going on.”

Shane thinks some more, then, finally, after long ponderous moments, nods. “Okay. I can do that.”

“It’s a deal?”

“It’s a deal.”

And Ryan looks relieved, and also anxious, and probably seventeen more unknowable things, but the tension drains out of the room, and they enjoy the rest of their pizza with a side of casual conversation.

*

“Hey, Ryan?”

“Yeah?”

They’ve finished the rest of their pizza and a second round of beers a while ago, and either one of them is likely to doze off on the couch any minute now.

“You know there’s no fucking way you’ll dare step into a place after I pointed out all the ghosts in there, right? You’re gonna shit yourself right in the doorway.”

“You know what." Without even looking at him, Ryan routinely punches Shane’s shoulder, and Shane can't help but start laughing. "Fuck you, Shane.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _wow_ , hi, thanks everyone so so much for all your comments and that overwhelming amount of love! you have now gotten through chapter 5: the one with all the fucking talking, exposition central, and _here we are_. thank you all so much for hanging around, i'll try to get to all your lovely comments soon  <3  
>  ~~(also, if you want to like, come bug me at my bfu tumbler, come on over to ~madejmn, because i will probably ask for prompts over there over the holidays.)~~


	6. the ghost town at vulture mine

Ryan, it appears, is going all out for both the season premiere and for Shane’s chance to prove he can actually see ghosts: all Shane knows is that they’re headed to Arizona, and Ryan refuses to tell him anything more than that—he figures it’s so he can’t read up on it and fake any knowledge of the ghosts there.

Shane rolls with it, as he does, which is how he finds himself in the passenger seat of Ryan’s car on the way to the Sonoran Desert, no questions asked.

Shane rolls with a lot of things.

It’s a six hour drive to Arizona even without traffic, and they spend the first two hours with casual conversation, squabbling over radio channels, Ryan defending his driving and refusing to leave the wheel to Shane, before they fall into some sort of road trip silence when the sights get particularly monotone.

“Why did you sign on to this?”

It’s Ryan who breaks the silence, and he casts Shane a sideways glance. Shane arches an eyebrow upward.

“You needed a co-host. And it’s a pretty good show, Ryan.”

Ryan rolls his eyes, but the compliment makes him smile nonetheless, and Shane has to look out the window to hide his own pleased little smile at that.

“You know that’s not what I mean. I mean—you can see _ghosts_. Why would you want to go to all these… all these haunted places?”

There’s another glance, and Ryan looks genuinely confused by it. It’s been something of an unspoken topic—they’ve been working on their True Crime season of Unsolved, and they don’t talk about New Orleans unless it’s late and they’re alone. Shane is pretty okay with that.

Shane hums in thought, then shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re convinced there’s ghosts and demons lurking wherever we go, and you always go into these places anyway. Only difference is I see them, so I don’t have to jump at shadows.”

The answer doesn’t seem to satisfy Ryan, who’s chewing on his lower lip as he mulls it over, and he exhales loudly. “But I want to see ghosts. I _want_ to prove it. That’s—it’s different. You don’t want to see ghosts. Why did you agree to it?”

 _Because I’m worried you’ll get yourself hurt_ , Shane thinks, and, _Because I just can’t say no to you._ What he says is, “Because I just can’t say no to you,” but it comes out casually, flippantly, in a way he certainly didn’t think it.

Way to show some emotional vulnerability, he thinks to himself, and tries not to roll his eyes at his own predictability.

Ryan makes a noise, a little harrumph, but he shrugs. “Alright, so you don’t want to say. I’ll drop it.” Which, in Ryan speak, means he will drop it for now, but it’s filed away for later, and Shane definitely hasn’t heard the last of it.

And it’s not like Shane doesn’t want to tell him—there are a dozen and a half things he wants to tell Ryan, things that are suddenly at the tip of his tongue sometimes, and one of these days, he thinks, he will just blurt them out at an inopportune moment if he opens that proverbial box of Pandora, so he holds his tongue and says nothing at all.

“You are a dick for not telling me, though,” Ryan tacks on, pointedly, and Shane laughs.

*

They check into a motel in Wickenburg, Arizona, in the late afternoon, with enough time left to grab dinner and take a walk around town before Ryan leads them on their nightly excursion. Their crew is going to arrive a day later, and it hasn’t taken a lot for Ryan to convince them that it’s more frugal if they do the early scouting by themselves.

“Please tell me cowboy hats are in the budget, Ryan.”

Shane is stretching his arms over his head, now that they’ve stepped out of the motel into the street, into just a wall of heat, it feels like after the A/C of both car and motel, and the whole place looks, Shane reasons, the closest he has ever come to the Wild West.

Behind him, Ryan laughs. “Right? This kind of place really makes you want to get up on a horse and shoot some bottles off a fence.” 

“We’re here for the mine, right?” He asks, and Ryan nods. Given the amount of signs pointing towards a place ominously called Vulture Mine, it would be pretty pointless to deny it now. “That’s pretty fucking cool.”

“Remember how you said if there was any place that was definitely haunted, it had to be a mine?”

“I didn’t know you listened to me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I try not to. But—” Ryan makes a sweeping gesture at, well, a bit of everything and nothing, “This place is old. There’s going to be ghosts here.”

Shane nods, and starts striding on down the street towards the nearest store blazing words such as ‘cowboy gear’ and ‘authentic’ in very bold letter, where both of them stop in front of the window.

They grimace in unison when they spot the prices. “Okay, they are _not_ in the budget,” Ryan decides with a frown and Shane gives a drawn out “Yeeeeah.” in agreement.

They stare at the display for a little while longer, and Shane shrugs. “We’re still good on the chaps, though, right? I’m sure you could pull that off.”

Ryan huffs out a laugh, even as he rolls his eyes. “You wish.”

“Yeah, kinda.”

Ryan shoots him a look, eyebrow shooting upward, and Shane just shrugs and moseys on without another word, in his most exaggerated impression of a bowlegged cowboy stride. Ryan just shakes his head.

*

“You really sure you want to do this?”

Shane shines his light around for a few moments, and next to him, Ryan takes a deep breath. By the time they have arrived at Vulture Mine, dusk has settled into night, and after a brief chat with one of the security guards, Ryan and Shane have been left to their own devices in front of the decrepit old town. 

Ryan looks uncertain as he chews on his lower lip, but he nods nonetheless. “Yeah, of course. For all I know you’re full of shit, so. Better prove yourself.” There’s a challenge in his tone, even when he sounds nervous, and he raises an eyebrow as he looks at Shane. It’s enough to make Shane smirk, and he shrugs.

“Alright. Your call, my man.”

The town is, well. Appropriately decrepit, now that it’s a historical monument, and even the Arizona nights are still hot enough that both their faces are already covered in a light sheen of sweat. 

“See any ghosts yet?” Ryan asks once they’re a little ways into the town, and he chuckles, but it barely masks his nervousness. 

Shane shakes his head, but he still grins at Ryan. “You sure are keen on seeing some ghosts, Ryan. You think you can handle it?”

Ryan just narrows his eyes at him and Shane laughs again, before Ryan admits, “Well, it’s a good sign, right? No ghosts being around? No murder. No wrongful deaths or—”

“No, ghosts are a good sign. When there’s ghosts, there usually aren’t any demons,” Shane cuts him off with a shrug, shines his light around the decrepit town, and walks further ahead.

Behind him, Ryan stands stock-still, frozen in place, before he finally croaks out a “What?”

“What, what?” Shane doesn’t really stop, instead he takes in the sights—because ghosts or not, this is an impressive piece of history, and he would enjoy a tour through it even during the daylight. The ‘keep out’ signs are particularly inviting.

“You’re fucking with me. You are _absolutely_ fucking with me,” Ryan states, hopeful, and Shane shoots him a look over his shoulder, then, entirely matter of fact, tells him, “I’m not.”

Ryan looks a little bit like part of his soul is leaving his body as his mind tries to wrap around that information.

What he says is, “I hate you so fucking much, Shane Madej.” 

Shane just laughs, but after a moment, he falls silent and just looks at Ryan. “You don’t have to do this, you know that, right?”

He wants to offer Ryan this out—they can still turn back, pretend that New Orleans never happened, go back to doing their shows with their usual banter, and deny everything. It’s not his favorite outcome for this, but hell, he wants to give Ryan this option. 

Ryan shakes his head, definitively. “No. No, we’re doing this. We are doing this.” 

He stares down the decrepit old building in front of them; usually, this would be where he starts giving Shane various information about the place and its gruesome history, and Shane can tell it’s on the tip of his tongue, but he stays mum—Shane has to prove himself. 

Shane nods, Ryan takes a deep breath, and they enter a building that, Shane reasons, has to have been a warehouse at some point.

The air is barely any cooler in there—there’s old machinery still littering the place, huge, imposing pieces of abandoned metal, but he’s getting pelted by fewer bugs than outdoors, and that’s good enough for him. 

He has barely gotten a good idea of the place, when there’s the sound of something scratching over sandy floor, and Shane grimaces. Ryan’s head whips around. He obviously wants to say something, but he doesn’t, instead he surreptitiously glances at Shane.

Shane keeps his face neutral, but he’s looking in the same direction, and after a reluctant moment, swings the light of his flashlight that way. The sound is drawing closer, and he draws his lips into a thin line.

Around the corner of a large grinding wheel, a barely visible hand drags on the floor, like it’s clawing on the ground to drag itself forward, and a second hand joins it, then the head of a distressed person—former person—follows, and Shane dreads the sight even before he can properly wrap his mind around it.

The ghost, whoever he might be, is dragging himself along the floor, except there’s nothing following from the waist down—where there should be hips, legs, all there is are tattered clothes and… 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Shane sounds pained as he understands: tattered clothes and _entrails_ , dragging through the dirt on the floor behind the guy, who’s still moving, like he hasn’t realized it’s over, like he doesn’t understand that there is no stitching him back together when half his innards have already been left behind. 

Whatever happened to this man, it was no accident, and Shane kind of wants to throw up.

“Any chance this thing was—a grinder of sorts?” Shane says, his voice dry.

Ryan’s face pales, even if he can’t see anything. Apparently he’s right, and Ryan knows about it, knows what transpired here. Even in the dark of the old warehouse at night, with nothing but their flashlights illuminating that place, the color visibly drains from Ryan’s face, once Shane manages to take his eyes off the gruesome sight and actually look at his friend.

“Lucky guess.” Ryan’s voice is exactly as dry as Shane’s, even as he tries to pretend to be calm.

Shane has to swallow hard and shakes his head. “How about—let’s check out someplace else, yeah? Yeah. Yeah.” He’s not scared of ghosts, there’s no reason to be, and he knows it, but god, the _sight_ …

Ryan doesn’t hesitate, and Shane tries to look composed, but there is no denying they are rushing outside, where it takes a few moments for both of them to gather themselves, and even longer until Ryan dares to ask, “What did you—did you see anything in there?”

“No,” Shane answers, a little too quickly, and Ryan can tell, and he corrects himself, “Maybe. Let’s—let’s just skip this one and try the next, Ryan, okay?”

There’s no argument from Ryan, and they move on.

*

The building they venture into next is an abandoned school, if the wealth of decayed chairs and tables is any indication, and if it weren’t, the hand-painted sign out front would have tipped him off as well.

“It’s been bugging me for a while now, so—” Ryan pauses as he carefully steps over some debris, “–if you sold your soul to a demon or whatever, why the hell can you see ghosts?”

While the warehouse was somewhat maneuverable, the school is littered with everything left behind, from loose floorboards to broken chairs, and both of them have to take care with every step. 

“Now here’s a good question,” Shane gives back, then meanders a bit before he can give any answer, “I figure it’s kind of—kind of that I’ve already got one foot on the other side, you know?”

Ryan just looks at him, eyebrows drawn together, and waits for him to go on.

“Already booked my ticket to hell, _pardner_ ,” he’s feigning an abysmal, indeterminate mid-western accent, aiming for lackadaisical, and Ryan rolls his eyes, if not entirely without fondness, “Now it’s just a’matter of punching it.” 

“That’s, like. Half an answer at best,” Ryan points out, correctly, and Shane nods.

“Well, figure I’m technically soulless now—” Shane starts, only to get interrupted by Ryan muttering “Now _here’s_ some old news,” under his breath, so Shane gives him a chastising look, even as a smirk curls up his lips, and continues undeterred, “Since I don’t own it anymore. So I guess I’m not a regular ol’ person anymore, ‘cause the veil’s been drawn back, or whatever.”

He shrugs, because most his explanations are half guesses, half things he worked out over the past ten or so years, backed up with very little research. “And ghosts are nothing but left behind souls and energy, I guess? Which somehow makes me just about invisible to them. No soul Shane, getting zero ghostly action.”

“That’s—huh.” Ryan looks thoughtful, but he doesn’t question it, and besides, the atmosphere of the place is demanding his attention. That, and he’s going to trip over loose floorboards if he doesn’t take care. 

It feels odd, being actively encouraged to actually react to ghosts, now that Shane has gotten so used to ignoring them, but he tries not to shrug off every single noise he hears. And noises there are: light footsteps in the rooms next doors, something scratching through sand, the faintest whispers. Or just wind.

“Did anyone die in this school?” Shane’s more curious than anything, and Ryan tilts his head to the side. 

“I don’t know. Records from this time are kind of… vague at best. A lot of it got lost with time. A lot of people died when the mining tunnels under this town collapsed, and there has been a plague—”

“ _A_ plague?”

“Yes, a plague, as I said—”

“As you’re saying, it’s mostly wild conjecture, is what I’m hearing,” Shane points out with a smirk, and Ryan rolls his eyes at him.

“Shut up and tell me if you’re seeing anything.”

“Shut up _and_ tell you? Which one is it Ryan, I mean…” Shane sounds insufferable, and Ryan looks like he’s contemplating smacking him with his flashlight—until Shane suddenly freezes, and turns toward the door to the adjacent room. 

Ryan watches, curiously, and Shane starts slowly heading over to the old class room. It takes some looking around to spot the source of the noise, but sure enough, in one of the back corners, two kids of different ages—maybe five and nine—are sitting on the floor, drawing figures into the dust. 

“I—yeah. Kids did die here, I guess,” Shane says, and he steps a little further into the room, so Ryan can get through the room past him.

“Where?”

“The back right corner.” 

Ryan looks that way, but he doesn’t quite swing his flashlight the whole way, just in case he could … startle ghosts? He’s not sure. They both fall quiet, and Ryan listens intently when he can’t see anything. All he can make out is the sound of maybe sticks scratching over the floor, and to him, it sounds like children whispering.

“This is freaking me the fuck out, Shane.” Ryan takes another step into the room, simultaneously closer to Shane, and fixes his eyes on the corner of the room. He can’t really make out much of anything—and suddenly one of the kids giggles, audibly, and he downright jumps and stumbles back into Shane.

“Hey now, down boy,” Shane is speaking in a hushed whisper himself, and he places one hand on Ryan’s shoulder to steady him.

“What can you see?” Ryan’s whispering, too.

“Two kids. One’s pretty young, the other … maybe fourth grade? They look… not great. But not like—they must’ve died in one piece.” It’s phrasing that makes him wince, thinking back on the first ghost and he quickly goes on, “But they’re just sitting in the corner. Playing with dirt. They sure did not live to see the invention of the Gameboy.”

Ryan lets out a surprised huff of a laugh, and elbows Shane. “Oh, shut up.”

*

It’s not terribly much, as far as proof goes, but considering Ryan’s tiny hairs are standing on edge and they’re both simultaneously wired and exhausted, they call it a night pretty soon after the school building. They’ll be back tomorrow, and they’ll be back to other haunted places soon enough, too.

“So this is just what life is like for you? Normal day, couple ghosts here and there?”

Ryan waits until they’re back in their motel room to breach the topic, because they both needed the drive back to calm down—well, Ryan more so than Shane, probably—and spent it on small talk instead.

“Yeah, basically,” Shane agrees, absently tugging on his shirt and trying to get any sort of air ventilation going, because by god, Arizona is smoldering. “I mean, it’s not like—I’m not the kid from Sixth Sense. They don’t really notice me, and none of them have wanted me to avenge their death yet. It’s more like… I imagine this is what being able to see ultraviolet light is like, you know what I mean? I can just see one or two more colors than everyone else.”

“And the colors are … ghosts and demons?” Ryan pulls a face, more at Shane’s meandering analogy than the topic at hand.

“Yup.” 

Ryan has more questions, Shane can tell, but it looks like he’s just about to ready to fall asleep and take some time to process all of tonight’s information, so once they’ve squabbled over who gets to shower first and both de-grime, they settle into their beds on either side of the room pretty soon and fall asleep without much further ado.

*

Ryan is jumpier than usual during the episode—or, well, maybe Shane’s projecting.

Truth be told, Ryan is always jumpy when they head into potentially haunted places, and Shane takes the opportunity to really ramp up his disbeliever act, despite of, or maybe precisely because of the looks it gets him from Ryan when the camera isn’t on them, but it works, and it lightens the situation. 

They don’t run into Grindy McEntrails again, thankfully, and when Shane starts seeming genuinely relaxed, downright daring, Ryan relaxes a little, too. He still wants proof; the fact that Shane can see ghosts hasn’t changed anything about his mission statement, and until he catches it on record, he won’t rest easy.

Still. All in all, the episode passes mostly incident free, and Shane is pretty a-okay with that.

*

The drive home drags on. It’s just Shane and Ryan again, their crew leaving in the car they came with, and they’re both exhausted from two very late nights. Ryan is gripping the steering wheel tightly, and Shane is fighting tooth and nail to stay awake, so his friend doesn’t have to be the only one awake and attentive, but if he dozes off here and there, well. There’s not telling.

“Shane.”

Shane snuffles a bit, and pulls his head forward a little, starts rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking—”

“Well, that’s a bad sign.”

“ _I’ve been thinking_ ,” Ryan repeats, more intently, “And I’m gonna help you get your soul back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haaaappy New Year, everybody! This took longer than anticipated, my computer tried to die somewhere in the middle of it, _but here we are_! Thank you so much for being patient and sticking around, and for the heaps of encouragement that have gotten me this far  <3
> 
> ALSO! For reasons utterly beyond me that have me squealing, this fic now has actual fanart! Go check out @daryshkart on tumblr, folks.


	7. conversations in cars.

_“Guys. _Guys_ , I found a Ouija board.”_

_Ally walks back into the basement, waving a little board with letters and numbers on it around: the basement where Shane and a number of her college friends are milling about—Shane’s sat on the floor with his back against the couch, a Super Nintendo controller in his hands, to his right, Nick’s leaving him in the dust in a relentless Mario Kart race._

_“Remind me again, who cares?” Shane manages between gritted teeth, because god, he is _not_ winning this one, and from up on the couch Katie snorts out a laugh._

_“Shut up, Shane. None of us came to watch you lose at this game, again. And again.” She pauses for effect, waits for Nick to cross the finish line and announce him the winner. “Aaand then some more.”_

_From his spot on the floor, Shane cranes his neck back to glare up at her, but he doesn’t have anything to counter, so he just flips her off. He gets a laugh in response, while Nick next to him grins broadly._

_“Alright, c’mon, let’s talk to some ghosts,” Katie gets off the couch, pats Shane on the head, and with a heavy sigh he turns off the console and ignores Nick’s gloating._

_Ally, in the meantime, has set the board up on the floor and waits for the rest of her friends to gather around it. Begrudgingly, Shane follows suit._

_“So, how does this work?”_

_“Well—” Ally produces a little wooden triangle with a round hole in one of its corners, big enough for one letter on the board to show through, and places it on the board. “We all place our hands on this thing, right? And then we ask a question and the, uh… Spirits? Spirits will answer the question for us.”_

_“Does it have the answers to my next exam?” Shane asks, drawling it sarcastically, “Because otherwise…”_

_Katie rolls her eyes. “Shut up. We’ve gotta conjure a ghost first. It’s not gonna work otherwise.”_

_“It’s not going to work regardless, because ghosts don’t exist,” Shane points out, but the rest of his friends pointedly ignore him and continue their conversation without him._

_“How do you conjure a ghost?” Nick sounds appropriately skeptical, and Katie and Ally exchange a glance—neither of them really has any idea how this is supposed to work, and Ally shrugs eventually._

_“Let’s just, uh…” She trails off, and Katie takes over._

_“We did this at a sleepover once, when I was 14. We all just gotta… take each other by the hand and think really hard about—some nice, deceased person you know.”_

_“At a sleepover?” Nick arches an eyebrow upward, and shoots Shane a look, “I thought it was all pillow fights, but I should’ve known it’s really all about conjuring demons. Feels appropriate.”_

_Katie elbows him, and Shane laughs._

_“Pay attention, for god’s sake, and let’s do this.”_

_There’s some more murmuring, overly exaggerated eye rolling, but they all settle in, put their hands on the wooden triangle._

_The room gets silent, and nothing happens._

_“So…” Shane starts, and gets another glare from Katie._

_“I hope you’re all thinking really hard,” she tells them, with an arched eyebrow, and her friends nod. She gives it another minute, then, “Is someone present right now?”_

_Nothing happens for a few more seconds, but before Shane can make a sarcastic comment about it, the planchette moves—or they move it—towards yes. Katie shoots Shane a look, a ‘told you so’._

_“Who’s there?” It’s Ally, this time, who takes charge._

_They all exchange glances. The triangle starts moving again, and Shane rolls his eyes. “So which one of you is moving this thing?”_

_Alex puts on an innocent look, Katie and Ally look at each other and shake their head._

_The planchette keeps moving._

__A_ —_

_Shane raises an eyebrow at Katie, disbelieving._

__F-R-I-E-N-D._ _

_Shane rolls his eyes, but doesn’t say anything._

_“Why are you here?” He asks, a little more dubious sounding than even he intended._

__Y-O-U—_ _

_Katie purses her lips, and seems to be getting a little nervous._

__C-A-L-L-E-D._ _

_“This _is_ a bit slow and tedious, isn’t it?” Alex asks, but there’s a nervous chuckle in his voice that he can’t quite deny._

_Shane, for his part, sounds more flippant than anything else. “Well, what can you do?”_

__A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G._ _

_There’s some nervous chuckling going around, and suspicious glances are exchanged._

_“And what do you want for it?” Ally asks, and it manages to startle at least Katie a bit—the lot of it sounds a little more sinister than asking a ghost whether their crushes liked them back. She doesn’t look like she likes it._

__Y-O-U-R-S-O-U-L._ _

_This time, Shane starts laughing. “Alright, which one of you is moving the thing?”_

_They all shake their heads, and utter variations of “it’s not me, I swear,” and Shane just looks amused, a smirk curling up the corners of his lips._

_“Anything, huh?” Shane says out loud, one eyebrow arched up, and it earns him an immediate glare from Katie._

_“So what, you’re just gonna—sell your fucking soul to the devil?” Katie’s voice is a harsh whisper, and the other guys chuckle quietly—but it’s awkward and uncomfortable._

_“One, you told us we’re just talking to any old ghosts, and two—” Shane rolls his eyes, then dramatically clasps his chest. “We both already know I’m dead inside, Katie. What’s losing my soul even going to do?”_

_The planchette moves quicker now, and it spells out ‘ _What do you wish for?_ ’ in record time. _

_Shane licks his lips as he thinks it over. Katie looks like she wants to step in, but she bites her tongue._

_“I would like to, uh, succeed in getting my bachelor’s degree—“_

_And this time, Katie actually groans, and if it didn’t mean that she would have to take her hands off the triangle, she looks like she would be punching him right about now._

_“And while we’re at it, a pizza. But, like, a really, really good one.”_

_There’s chuckling and groaning among the group, and for a few long seconds nothing happens—and then the little triangle starts moving._

__It will be done.__

_They grow silent; no one asks a question, the planchette doesn’t move._

_“I think that’s enough for today,” Katie says, but she does it so quickly she trips over her words, and it’s obvious that she is thoroughly creeped out by the whole thing, and Ally nods, “Yeah, let’s wrap this up.”_

_“I think we’re good here, uh. Ghost. Thanks for your time. We, err… We wish you a good evening and bid you adieu.”_

_The planchette moves to the GOOD BYE in the bottom right corner, and more than one person in their circle lets out a relieved sigh._

_“Okay, honestly, I don’t know who was moving this thing, but this is—“ Ally trails off, unsure what to even _say_ , and the silence is only broken by the awkward, relieved laughter Nick huffs out._

_“Does it even—“ Shane starts to speak, but suddenly, the doorbell rings, and between the silence and the tension, it startles most of them enough to jump._

_“Well, it’s not the police, this is the quietest party I’ve ever been to,” Alex hazards as his guess, but they all exchange another look before Ally gets up and to the door._

_A little nervous, a little unwilling to stay in the basement—and even more unwilling to admit it—the rest of them follow suite._

_Ally opens the door to a guy in a pretty generic pizza delivery uniform, that none of them can quite place, but no one gives it any thought._

_“I’ve got a pizza for, uh—” The pizza delivery guy looks at the smudged writing on the receipt. “Slane?”_

_The four college kids blink at him for a second, and the silence gets awkward enough that the delivery guy shifts from one foot to the other and finally shrugs, a little annoyed. “Look, I’ve got places to be, it’s already paid for, do you want it or not?”_

_“Uh, yeah,” Ally is the first to unfreeze, looks at the receipt and finally hands the pizza over to Shane after a moment of confusion._

_“It’s cheesy crust,” Shane points out once Ally has closed the front door again and he’s popped the pizza box open, and Shane arches an eyebrow, skeptically, before his mouth quirks up into a bemused smirk._

_Nick is the first to break out into laughter, breaking the confused tension, and then the other three burst out, too._

*

“You can’t just—square off with demons,” Shane tells Ryan, insistently, while the scenery outside rolls past the passenger seat window, “I didn’t think I’d have to tell _you_ , of all people.”

“Why not? You challenge them at every location we go to!” Ryan sounds anxious, but more so, testy, and he shoots Shane a glare.

“That’s different,” Shane insists and stares out the window, his mouth drawn in a thin line. 

“How?”

“It just _is_.”

Shane crosses his arms and refuses to budge any more on the topic, so Ryan fixes his eyes on the road, and they fall into a tense, charged silence.

*

_The cold Chicago night air is something of a smack in the face when Shane stumbles out of the bar, and he inhales sharply as he props up his collar. It’s not a long walk from the bar to his dorm, and hell, he can always use the little sobering walk._

_Besides, he has a German test coming up, and he can’t afford to stay out drinking any longer._

_One or two blocks in front of him, a woman sways as she walks and Shane squints to make her out better; for some reason, she looks a little foggy, but then again… It’s dark, and he’s clearly not the only one who had a few drinks tonight._

_He tries to keep a respectful distance, so he doesn’t make her nervous, but she doesn’t seem to notice him, and she is moving so slowly he catches up to her anyway just in time for her to stumble against the nearest wall._

_“Miss?”_

_Shane’s concern is audible in his voice, and he reaches out to her, only to pull back because his hand feels suddenly very, very cold._

_“Are you alright? I could call you a cab,” he offers, his brows furrowed, and the woman finally acknowledges him and turns to face him._

_For a moment, Shane thinks maybe he had one drink too many after all, because he can’t quite figure out what’s wrong with the woman’s face, like something about it just doesn’t make sense. And then he sees it, suddenly, the way half of it seems to be exploded open, hair matted down with blood, her right eye socket yawning open into nothingness, and—_

_Before Shane can make out anything beyond that, his stomach roils, and he’s leaning against the nearest building, puking his guts out on the pavement._

_By the time he looks up again, the woman has seemingly vanished into thin air. Which is remarkably hard to do, on an open street, Shane thinks, but also—_

_Shane returns to vomiting a little more, for good measure._

_He also forgets about the encounter for a while, for equally good measure._

*

“You shout at them and they never do anything to you,” Ryan shoots back, and Shane hesitates a second too long to respond, so Ryan tacks on, suspiciously, “Right?”

Shane grimaces and doesn’t respond for another moment, then shrugs. “Mostly, yeah.”

Ryan waits, expectantly. 

“It’s like—” Shane hums and chews on his bottom lip as he thinks it over, trying to find a good way of explaining it. “I’ve sold my soul, right, so it belongs to someone else. So if any demons try to… mess with me, I guess? They’re essentially messing with the good ol’ horned thing I sold my soul to. And they don’t want to do that, I’ve realized.” 

There’s something endearing about the way Ryan’s face reflects every single thought going through his head, and his face goes from skeptical, to confused, to very unhappy realization in the span of seconds.

“So that means—” Ryan stops again, pulls a face, and doesn’t quite know to continue, so Shane takes over: “So that means whoever I sold my soul to is a meaner motherfucker than the rest, yes.” He shrugs, then adds, dryly, “And to think, he got my soul at such a bargain.” 

Ryan blanches visibly, but he stares determinedly ahead, his grip white-knuckled on the driving wheel. For the few, drawn out quiet minutes that follow, Shane thinks maybe, just maybe he has Ryan convinced—maybe they can drop this now.

“I don’t care.” Ryan’s voice is quiet, and before Shane can ask him to speak up, Ryan repeats it, louder, “I don’t care.”

This time, he looks over at Shane, and his face is determined, the most set in stone Shane has ever seen. It does funny things to his stomach; there’s dread that he has dragged Ryan into all of this, and something much more tender, much more complicated, something he wants much, much less to touch on, that his friend would do this for him.

“I’m going to help you fix this, and we’re not going to argue about it. That’s that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tap tap* hello, is this thing on? ...to anyone who's still here: thank you so much, for all the lovely comments that have kept me going! i love you all, this has not been abandoned and shall not be until it's finished!


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